THE SHADOW OF THE DESERT 75 



Take the three familiar silences of winter : the 

 sudden hush that falls at twilight on the coming 

 of the first frost; the breathless suspense, full 

 of foreboding, that awaits the breaking of a winter 

 storm ; the crystal stillness — that speech of the 

 stars — pervading earth and sky on a brilliant 

 frosty night ! These all differ from the summer 

 silences, as even the drowsy quiet of an August 

 noon over my Eastern fields differed from this 

 dearth, this death of sound here in the desert, 

 where the taut silence seemed drawn like shrunken 

 skin over the bones of the sand and sage. 



As we picked our way across the broken rock 

 about the shore, a rattlesnake made the silence 

 shiver; an avocet flew up with a note of woe, 

 and then all was still again, the bones of cattle 

 which lay scattered over the shallow valley quite 

 as capable of stirring as any living thing in sight. 

 Yet there was something stirring — yonder — a 

 gray-brown shadow, far off on the alkali crust, a 

 loping, backward-looking figure which halts at 

 the edge of the brush, then leaps the rocky rim 

 and is lost — the coyote ! 



I stood staring after him when the automobile, 

 having also climbed the rocks, came up and 



